The (Marketing) Apprentice

1. The (Marketing) Apprentice Starring: Allen Sacharine

2. Welcome! Allen Sacharine Chief Executive For the next twelve minutes you will have the opportunity to work with me on the marketing team of AMSLIB NHS Trust. Your mission (whether you accept it or not) is to give our worthy but much neglected Trust Library a “makeover”. To do this we will use something called “The Marketing Mix” If you succeed you may even find yourself taking home a five-figure salary (well you are librarians, after all!)

3. The “Marketing Mix” • The so-called ‘marketing mix’ describes those elements that can be manipulated to maintain competitive edge Allen Sacharine Chief Executive “Team A, perhaps you could share with us what you have found out about “the marketing mix””.

4. Team A Our team has discovered that “the marketing mix” typically refers to the 4Ps (McCarthy, 1960): • Product, • Place/distribution, • Pricing and • Promotion As librarians we typically focus on PRODUCT. But we would do well to consider the other elements.

5. Team A We should ask ourselves: • Are products distributed from a physical PLACE, or is the intranet, or even Internet, used for distribution? • How do PRICES for library products or services compare with electronic Internet based current awareness, document delivery or bibliographic services? Price not only relates to fee-based services but equally to how individual users ‘value’ the service. • Finally, will the library actively PROMOTE its services or risk losing business to new information providers?

6. Well that was boring and predictable! You are supposed to be attracting an eager band of innovative health librarians into the wonderful world of marketing – what you have found out so far is hardly going to twizzle any twin-sets! Do you have anything else to offer us? Allen Sacharine Chief Executive

7. Team A • As marketing has expanded into service delivery, the 4Ps have been joined by three more Ps (Dibb and Simkin, 1994): • PEOPLE – staff selection and customer care training. Information services are not likely to be delivered by people who are unskilled or demotivated; • PHYSICAL EVIDENCE – décor and ambience • PROCESS – efficiency of the process, delivering just-in-time not just-in-case. (Booth, 2000).

8. Four Ps? Seven Ps? Where will it end? Well you seem to have more Ps than Birdseye – is that the full sum of your intellectual efforts or do you have something else to say before your team is frozen out? Allen Sacharine Chief Executive

9. Team A And there’s more……. In specifically writing about library marketing, Weingand (1995) adds two more P’s: • PRELUDE (marketing audit – the needs analysis) and • POSTLUDE (evaluation). Er…Sir Allen – why are you glaring at us like that?

10. Nine Ps? Marketing Mix-Up, more like it! Right, by now I am thoroughly P-ed off. I hope that Team B has something better to offer? Allen Sacharine Chief Executive

11. Team B Well Sir Allen, our quest took us on the High Cs, namely to the 4C's developed by Lauterborn (1990): • Place becomes CONVENIENCE • Price becomes COST TO THE USER • Promotion becomes COMMUNICATION • Product becomes CUSTOMER NEEDS AND WANTS

12. Now we have gone from Ps to Cs! What deadwood have I been given for this series? I suspect there is more wood pulp in this Board Room than they hold in the Bodleian! If I wanted PCs I can go to my warehouses where I am up to my armpits in PC-1512s! Team B you literally have seconds to save yourselves! Allen Sacharine Chief Executive

13. Team B • But Sir Allen, the beauty of these C's is that they embody a much more client-oriented marketing philosophy. • When we deliver a library service we need to consider how convenient this will be for the client. • If we emphasise what the customer really wants (what they really, really want – but that is Spice, not Sugar!) they challenge previous marketing assumptions – for example, PROMOTION is a “one-way push“ of information which is markedly inferior to the two-way dialogue of COMMUNICATION.

14. Well you have at least earned a stay of execution! I can see that the traditional idea of marketing as reflected by the 4Ps is too product-oriented and that a product is no good without a customer. However I don’t think that the 4Cs are anything like as memorable as the P-words. I think that it is just another example of PC gone mad! Allen Sacharine Chief Executive

15. Let the audience decide! • So what do you think? Consider the two competing models of “the marketing mix” (4Ps vs 4Cs) and how they might apply to your service. Which is likely to be more useful when you are planning to give your library service a competitive edge? Record your thoughts in your portfolio.

16. Sleep well… • …And make your decision carefully and wisely… • After all the survival of your service is at stake – will you survive the ProMISe FOLIO Course into Week Three or will you hear those dreaded words….? 

17. You’re Fired!

18. References - 1 • Booth, A (2000). Marketing a service. In: Booth, A & Walton G (Eds). Managing knowledge in health services. (pp. 162-172). London: Library Association. http://www.shef.ac.uk/scharr/mkhs/chapters.htm • Dibb S & Simkin L, The Marketing Casebook, Routledge, 1994 • Lauterborn, B (1990) New marketing litany: four Ps passe: C-words take over. Advertising Age. 61 (41), 26.

19. References - 2 • McCarthy, J. (1960 1st ed.), Basic Marketing: A managerial approach, 13th ed., Irwin, Homewood Il, 2001. • Weingand, DE. (1995) Preparing for the Millennium: The Case for Using Marketing Strategies. Library Trends. 43(3):295. Available at: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1387/is_n3_v43/ai_16709298

20. Additional Reading • Marketing mix (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_mix • Webber S (2005) Marketing Mix http://dis.shef.ac.uk/sheila/marketing/mix.htm